My review of Find you in the Dark by Nathan Ripley will follow the publisher’s blurb.

In this chilling debut thriller, in the vein of Dexter and The Talented Mr. Ripley, a family man obsessed with digging up the undiscovered remains of serial killer victims catches the attention of a murderer prowling the streets of Seattle.

Martin Reese is obsessed with murder.

For years, he has been illegally buying police files on serial killers and studying them in depth, using them as guides to find missing bodies. He doesn’t take any souvenirs, just photos that he stores in an old laptop, and then he turns in the results to the police anonymously. Martin sees his work as a public service, a righting of wrongs that cops have continuously failed to do.

Detective Sandra Whittal sees it differently. On a meteoric rise in police ranks due to her case-closing efficiency, Whittal is suspicious of the mysterious caller—the Finder, she names him—leading the police to the bodies. Even if the Finder isn’t the one leaving bodies behind, who’s to say that he won’t start soon?

On his latest dig, Martin searches for the first kill of Jason Shurn, the early 1990s murderer who may have been responsible for the disappearance of his sister-in-law, whom he never met. But when he arrives at the site, he finds a freshly killed body—a young and recently disappeared Seattle woman—lying among remains that were left there decades ago. Someone else knew where Jason Shurn buried his victims . . . and that someone isn’t happy that Martin has been going around digging up his work.

When a crooked cop with a tenuous tie to Martin vanishes, Whittal begins to zero in on the Finder. Hunted by a real killer and by Whittal, Martin realizes that in order to escape the killer’s trap, he may have to go deeper into the world of murder than he ever thought.

I’m a huge Dexter fan so when I read the blurb I knew this book was for me. Now, to be fair, it’s not as Dextery as I would have liked but we do have a vigilante style novel where a serial “finder” catches the eye of a serial killer. Seriously folks…What could possibly go wrong ?

What boils beneath the surface of Martin Reese’s character was fascinating to read. Actually; the whole psychology behind sociopaths and serial killers is something that has always intrigued me. In another life I probably would have worked in forensics. Anyhow, picking up this book was a no-brainer.

Obviously Reese’s character was the one that carried me through the novel. How he kept his dark secrets from his family and friends were, for me quite interesting to read. It’s that dark side that we keep hidden that fascinated me most and with Reese, it was his struggle to hide and suppress his impulses while juggling real world problems. Then, by adding another layer of threat with a real serial killer and law enforcement on his back ; it got even more intense.

The fact that both “the solver” and the “killer” are trying to be one step ahead of the other – maneuvering and playing a game with only one winner definitely kept me reading. You will find a few twists in Find You in the Dark. Some were easy to spot and others I didn’t see coming.

Trying to keep his identity hidden through the crazy cat and mouse game was indeed very Dexteresque. But throughout the whole book, my interest was the psychology behind Martin Reese. The exploration into the minds of madmen, their obsessions and dark yearnings will always be something I’m interested in reading. If you are like me, then pick yourself up a copy of Nathan Ripley’s debut thriller !